A Turkey-Sized Conundrum
by bow-to-my-tie
Summary: Rose should have known better than to ask the Doctor to buy their family's Thanksgiving turkey.


**A/N:** This is a bit silly but I hope you enjoy it nevertheless :D Happy Thanksgiving!

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><p>"You bought a <em>turkey?<em>"

The Doctor nodded and licked his lips, looking uneasy. "Of course I did. You asked me to yesterday."

Rose grimaced. "A turkey? For _Thanksgiving?_"

He rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, that's what people _do,_ isn't it? That's the tradition?"

She let out a deep breath and tried to compose herself. She ran one hand through her hair and kept the other at her side, clutching the kitchen knife that she had grabbed when she had heard the disturbance in the house.

"You know I thought that you were dying, right?" She asked, arching an eyebrow. "I was prepared to jump in and kill that thing."

"Joey wouldn't hurt me, I was perfectly safe," the Doctor insisted. "I freed him from a potentially much worse fate."

"You _named_ the turkey?" Rose asked.

His response was a shrug. Then, he cocked his head and his eyes went wide as he pressed himself against the door of their pantry. "I think I hear Joey eating something. You don't happen to have any pecans or nuts in the kitchen, do you?"

"I bought pecans a few days ago, they're sitting in a bowl on the counter," Rose replied, expression slowly turning alarmed. "He's eating my pecans?"

The Doctor nodded slowly. "Uh, turkeys like pecans."

Rose fisted her hands in her hair, letting the knife clatter to the ground. "Oh my god, Doctor. Could you not have gotten a crate, or a cage – or, or, I don't know! _Or just not have bought a live turkey_?!"

"I'm sorry," he said, ducking his head but still staring at her with apologetic brown eyes. "He was just so _cute, _and you told me to get a turkey yesterday, so I asked the man if I could buy him, and they were going to _slice his head off,_ Rose, and I couldn't just let them kill Joey!"

Rose sighed. She had known from the moment she had kissed this Doctor on the beach that life with him wouldn't be easy. And, well, his intentions for this had been good. A bit bizarre, that went without saying, but good nevertheless. She took another look at him. His stupid irresistible puppy-dog eyes were in maximum overdrive. Rose opened her arms for him and he pulled her in for a hug immediately, lips brushing against her forehead

"Wild turkeys are really dangerous," Rose said with her voice slightly muffled by his shoulder, standing on her tippy toes.

"He's domesticated," the Doctor replied, as if that solved everything. "But from my limited knowledge of turkeys, they get angry when they're isolated, though."

Rose was about to call him out on admitting that he had limited knowledge of something when there was the loud sound of something rumpling in the kitchen. "Or extra hungry."

"Can we keep him?" the Doctor asked, pulling away enough to look Rose in the eyes.

"Doctor…"

"I mean, what else are we going to do with him? And he'll get better! We'll just teach him to stay out of your pecans and then he'll be perfectly fine. As domesticated as your typical house cat."

They heard Joey walking down the hallway, making a loud gobbling noise. "I think he's going towards the stairs. Can it climb stairs?"

The Doctor winced. "Turkeys love to climb things. And it's a 'he', by the way."

"Oh, god, what if he goes in our bedroom?" Rose hissed. "We should call animal control."

He shook his head. "No, they'd hurt him. We can handle this, Rose. We've handled much worse. Do you have your Torchwood field supplies?"

"It's in the living room, in my duffel bag," Rose explained.

The Doctor nodded. "Alright, well, this is simple. We'll just take your tranquilizer gun and put Joey to sleep, then figure out what to do with him from there."

They opened the pantry door slowly, the Doctor's eyes wide as he darted his head back and forth. "Definitely upstairs," Rose mused.

They grabbed the tranquilizer gun from her bag and the Doctor grabbed his makeshift sonic screwdriver – Rose didn't ask what for – and they began creeping up the stairs, following the pecan trail.

"Doctor?"

He glanced at her, screwdriver held high. "Yeah?"

"Thank you," she said, staring straight ahead towards their wide-open bedroom door, which Rose distinctly remembered leaving only cracked open. The turkey had to be in there.

He frowned. "What for? Getting Joey?"

"Thanksgiving wasn't nearly this exciting without you," she explained.

The Doctor stopped walking and gave her a manic smile, at the exact same time that the ginormous turkey popped out of their bedroom door. The Doctor gaped at it. "Did it… Oh no."

Rose gawked at the turkey. "Is that a bottle by its feet? What's all over its face? Is that some sort of…"

The Doctor ruffled his hair self-consciously. "It may or may not be, um, mycustomhairconditioner." He said the last bit far too quickly for her to understand.

Rose's eyes darted over to the Doctor. "What did you say? Custom hair conditioner?"

He gave a shy nod.

"You use custom hair conditioner? Why don't I know about that?"

"Now is not exactly the – WOAH, Joey, slow down there. You're a quick one, aren't you?"

Joey had darted down the hallway at a breaknecking pace, conditioner all over his feathers and gobbling like there was some sort of a fire and he was trying to usher everyone out of the building. "Hang on, I've got to get him," Rose said, steadying the tranquilizer gun in her hands.

"Shoot the turkey!" the Doctor yelled as they ran down the hall. "Shoot the turkey, Rose! Hurry!"

She let a dart fly but it hit the wall. Rose cursed and reloaded, trying to get a good aim on Joey.

Joey had reached the end of the hallway and was now moving in rapid, twitch-like motions, his head swiveling and his feathers shaking to get the sticky conditioner out. "The gun is stuck," Rose muttered, trying to unjam it.

"Hey, Joey," the Doctor said quietly, taking a step towards the turkey. "Look, you're okay. You're safe. You got into my hair conditioner, yeah? You know that was _really _expensive, buddy. It's not easy to look this good. What am I going to do now?"

"Doctor, is now the time to lecture the turkey? You can't exactly talk your way out of this one," Rose hissed as she tried to fix the gun.

"Sure I can," the Doctor said in an even quieter voice, risking another step. "He's a nice turkey… Yeah, see, he's looking at me. Nice, nice turkey… He wouldn't try and… Okay, he's walking towards me now." The Doctor took a step back as the turkey began gaining speed in its approach. "Um, Rose, have you got that tranquilizer gun yet? Rose? ROSE!"

Rose fired the gun the moment both the Doctor and Joey broke out into full sprints, and let out a sigh of relief as the dart hit Joey on his back. The Doctor slid down the wall beside her in relief, panting. He took a look at Rose and burst out into laughter, his hands clutching at his stomach as he tried to catch his breath, lacking his old respiratory bypass.

"You wouldn't be laughing if I hadn't gotten that gun fixed in time," Rose scolded, though she was starting to laugh, too.

Her phone rang and she pulled it out of her pocket, sliding down beside the Doctor and pressing it to her ear. "Hello? Oh, hi, mum. Oh, um…" She looked at the Doctor, fear evident in her eyes.

Rose leaned in close and whispered, "She wants to know if we have the turkey for tonight's dinner."

The Doctor's eyes fixated on Joey. "Tell her there were some complications."

Rose repeated that into the phone. She winced at Jackie's yelling. "We'll go out and get a turkey _right now,_ Mum."

"We will?" the Doctor protested.

Rose hung up the phone and stood up, looking at the turkey on the floor. "Can't we drop him off at some sort of turkey reserve with our baby TARDIS?"

"The ship would probably be strong enough for that trip," the Doctor said, rubbing his chin.

"Are you sure? Because Mum would _really_ kill us if we got stranded at a turkey resort on Thanksgiving."

The Doctor nodded more confidently. "Yeah, the TARDIS can do that. Let's carry Joey to the TARDIS."

After they had dropped off Joey (and said a very lugubrious goodbye), they picked up a turkey that Jackie would be much happier with. Then the Doctor pulled Rose against him on the TARDIS sofa whilst some program that neither of them cared about blared in the background.

"So what are you thankful for?" Rose asked, her head on his shoulder and one of her legs wedged between two of his.

He hummed and snuggled closer to her. "A _lot_ of things."

"Like what?"

"I'm thankful that I'm here with you, I'm thankful that we can grow old together, I'm thankful that we're happy together," he was counting off on his fingers and accentuating each reason with a kiss to her head.

Rose laughed quietly, looking up at him. "All of those things involve me."

He grinned. "But do you know the thing I'm most thankful for?"

Rose wrapped an arm around his back and nuzzled his neck with her nose, taking in a deep breath. "What's that, then?"

"I'm most thankful for the fact that I love you," he said.

Rose kissed her way up his neck until she reached his lips. Her forehead was pressed against his and his breath was ghosting on her lips. "Care to show me _just_ how thankful you are, Doctor?" she asked, her tongue poking out between her teeth as she smiled.

Suddenly he flipped them over, pinning her wrists on either side of her head. He was smirking mischievously, a naughty glint in his eyes. "You have no idea, Rose Tyler."

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><p><strong>AN:** Be sure to leave a review if you enjoyed and eat a lot of turkey today! :D


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